Conducting polymers have been a focus of attention among researchers for more than two decades, since the discovery of doped polyacetylene in the 1970's. Their relatively large conductivity, light weight and flexibility are just some of the factors that make conducting polymers much more desirable than metals in certain applications. Of the various conducting polymers studied, polyaniline (PANi) has been investigated the most due to its ease of synthesis, relatively high conductivity and good stability. Depending on the oxidation level, PANi can be synthesized in various insulating forms such as the fully reduced leucoemeraldine base (LEB), half-oxidized, emeraldine base (PANiEB) and fully-oxidized, pernigraniline base (PNB). These are shown in FIGS. 1a, 1b and 1c. Of these three forms, PANiEB is the most stable and widely investigated polymer in this family. PANiEB differs substantially from LEB and PNB in the sense that its conductivity can be tuned via doping from 10−10 up to 100 S cm−1 and more whereas the LEB and PNB forms cannot be made conducting. The insulating emeraldine base form of polyaniline (PANiEB) as seen in FIG. 1c consists of equal numbers of reduced and oxidized repeat units. The conducting emeraldine salt form (PANiES) is achieved by doping with aqueous protonic or functionalized acids where protons are added to the —N═ sites while maintaining the number of electrons in the polymer chain constant (non-redox doping). This leads to an increase in the conductivity by more than ten orders of magnitude depending on the strength of the acid and method of processing. The doping process can also be reversed by using ammonium hydroxide to reconvert the conducting salt form to the insulating base form.
PANiES is intractable and difficult to dissolve in common organic solvents, but PANiEB is soluble in 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP). Recently, it was reported that the observed dc conductivity of PANiES is a result of a small fraction (<1%) of the available charge carriers contributing towards charge transport. It has been suggested that the large number of isomeric forms that PANiEB can have leads to a less than optimum packing of polymer chains, thereby reducing interchain coherence. It was further shown via dielectric spectroscopy and photoluminescence studies that microphase separation of the oxidized and reduced repeat units took place in PANiEB dissolved and cast from NMP. Such microphase separation (the polymer chain consists of segments of LEB, PEB and PANiEB) can affect the bulk conductivity of PANiEB films when cast from NMP and made conducting via acid doping since the phase separated regions cannot (in their pure form) be made conducting, thereby increasing the disorder that is responsible for lowering the bulk conductivity. These methods and compounds are further described in the following references each of which is incorporated herein by reference:    1. Chiang C K, Fincher C R Jr, Park Y W, Heeger A J, Shirakawa H, Louis E J, Gau S C and MacDiarmid A G 1977 Phys. Rev. Lett. 39 1098–101    2. Chiang J C and MacDiarmid A G 1986 Synth. Met. 13 193–205    3. Monkman A P and Adams P 1991 Synth. Met. 40 87–96    4. Cao Y, Smith P and Heeger A J 1992 Synth. Met. 48 91    5. Wang Y Z, Joo J, Hsu C -H, Pouget J P and Epstein A J 1994 Macromolecules 27 5871–6    6. Kohlman R S, Zibold A, Tanner D B, Ihas G G, Ishiguro T, Min Y G, MacDiarmid A G and Epstein A J 1997 Phys. Rev. Lett. 78 3915–18    7. MacDiarmid A G, Zhou Y and Feng J 1999 Synth. Met. 100 131–40    8. Lee H T, Chuang K R, Chen S A, Wei P K, Hsu J H and Fann W 1995 Macromolecules 28 7645–52    9. Shimano J Y and MacDiarmid A G 2001 Synth. Met. 123 251–62    11. Shimano J Y and MacDiarmid A G 2001 Synth. Met. 119 365–6    12. Wu C G and Bien T 1994 Science 264 1757–9    13. Zarbin A J G, DePaoli M A and Alves O L 1999 Synth. Met. 99 227–35    14. Batalla B, Sinha G P and Aliev F M 1999 Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst. 331 1981–5    15. Havriliak S and Negami S 1966 J. Polym. Sci. Part C 14 99    16. Papathanassiou A N 2002 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 35 L88–9    17. Richert R and Blumen A (ed) 1994 Disorder Effects on Relaxational Processes (Berlin: Springer)    18. Calleja R D, Matveeva E S and Parkhutik V P 1995 J. Non-Cryst. Solids 180 260–5    19. Javadi H H S, Zuo F, Cromack K R, Angelopoulos M, MacDiarmid A G and Epstein A J 1989 Synth. Met. 29 E409–16    20. Zuo F, Angelopolous M, MacDiarmid A G and Epstein A J 1989 Phys. Rev. B 39 3570–8    21. Papathanassiou A N, Grammatikakis J, Sakkopoulos S, Vitoratos E and Dalas E 2002 J. Phys. Chem. Solids 63 1771–8    22. Jonscher A K 1983 Dielectric Relaxation in Solids (London: Chelsea)    23. Jonscher A K 1999 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 32 R57–70    24. Pinto N J, Acosta A A, Sinha G P and Aliev F M 2000 Synth. Met. 113 77–81    25. Scaife B K P 1989 Principles of Dielectrics (Oxford: Clarendon)    26. U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/444,849 filed Feb. 2, 2003.Accordingly, an improved means for suppressing microphase separation during preparation of PANiEB films is desired.